ST. LOUIS (AP)  Two months after having elbow surgery, oft-injured St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Chris Carpenter is optimistic about making at least 28 starts this season.

"I feel great. I really do," Carpenter said Saturday while signing autographs for two hours at the Cardinals Winter Warm-Up at a downtown hotel. "I feel like it's normal. Ultimately, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and we'll figure it out."

Carpenter made only four appearances last season after reconstructive elbow surgery and underwent another procedure in November to transpose an elbow nerve that was irritating the muscles in the back of his shoulder and around his neck.

"I had that nerve moved at the beginning of November. It did wonders for my elbow. It made it feel great," Carpenter said. "A lot of the problems I was having are gone -- not a lot of them are, but all of them are. My elbow is not an issue. My shoulder just needs to get conditioned to throw."

It was a major decision for Carpenter to have the nerve surgery because the first choice was therapy and rest in October after the pitcher visited four specialists. A month later, he had the surgery.

"It wasn't my choice," Carpenter said about the rest and therapy. "It was the feeling of everybody, including our (team) doctor, that we'd be better off to go this route and if it didn't work, we could look into some other stuff. I'm pretty excited about the way I feel. I'm thinking it's going to be all right."

The 33-year-old right-hander pitched only 15 1-3 innings last season. The 2005 NL Cy Young winner went 0-1 with a 1.76 ERA and was shut down in early September.

Carpenter was sidelined for the 2004 postseason and then returned to win the NL Cy Young Award the following season. Carpenter won 21 games in 2005 and 15 in 2006, when St. Louis won the World Series.

He was the NL comeback player of the year in 2004 after missing all of '03 and most of '02 recovering from shoulder surgery.

Manager Tony La Russa has said he might use Carpenter as a closer this season if he is unable to be a starter. Carpenter didn't rule out going to the bullpen, but he made it clear his preference is to start.

"I'll do whatever they want me to do," he said. "If that's the case, that's the case. I'm just going to take it one game at a time like I have all the time in the past. I'm going to do everything I can to take the ball every fifth day. With everything that I've gone through, obviously, some of it is out of my hands. I've done everything I can in the past four months to go out and pitch."

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